


Space news

by MrToddWilkins (orphan_account)



Series: Space stuff [12]
Category: None - Fandom
Genre: news stories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/MrToddWilkins
Series: Space stuff [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1224371





	1. December 1,1999:stories in general

NASA officials will meet today to select a launch date for the shuttle Discovery's much-needed mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

The meeting is expected to conclude with the U.S. space agency announcing December 9 as the day Discovery will begin its 10-day mission to fix Hubble's crippled pointing system.

"The 9th is still doable. There just isn't much margin," NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said.

Technical troubles have used all the extra padding shuttle managers had built into Discovery pre-flight schedule. That means if any additional gremlins surface over the next week, the shuttle wouldn't meet its appointed launch date.

But delays are nothing new to this mission, the third shuttle flight to service and upgrade the $3 billion Hubble telescope.

The mission was originally scheduled for October 14, but a series of wiring problems and other work-place incidents have kept Discovery grounded on Earth.

Once in space, four of Discovery's seven international astronauts will perform a quartet of spacewalks to install new pointing equipment and other electronics into Hubble.  
  


———-

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been selected for a contract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build a spacecraft that will travel to Mars. This is the first contract Ball Aerospace has won that involves building a spacecraft that will leave the Earth�s orbit and travel to another planet. The contract is contingent on NASA committing the funds required for the Mars Micromission. This decision is expected by February 2000.

The spacecraft, which falls under NASA's Mars Micromissions program, is the size of an office desk and weighs less than 500 pounds. More than half of its weight is taken up with the fuel necessary to fly the spacecraft to Mars, which is the distance around the Earth 1,870 times. Aerojet in Sacramento will build the propulsion system for this spacecraft, under subcontract to Ball. The spacecraft will carry a NASA communications payload that will relay data from other Mars missions back to Earth.

"This is an important strategic win for Ball Aerospace," said Harold Reitsema, director of space science missions at Ball Aerospace. "We expect that the Mars Micromissions will give us the opportunity to build multiple spacecraft that fly to Mars," Reitsema said. "In addition, the design for the Micromissions calls for the development of small, lightweight spacecraft components that can be used to build low-cost spacecraft for other challenging missions to the Moon, Venus, asteriods, and comets.

"The Mars Micromissions opportunity is a nice complement to other missions that we are involved in. These are the Deep Impact mission, which will fly to comet Tempel 1 and observe the formation of an impact crater, and Space Technology-3, which is NASA’s first attempt to fly two spacecraft in formation to obtain high-resolution images through interferometry. These missions all leave Earth orbit and represent Ball’s commitment to involvement in new NASA science missions to explore our solar system and look for other solar systems," concluded Reitsema.

NASA's Mars Micromissions program, run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, intends to send small general purpose spacecraft buses, one or two every two years starting late 2002, to support low-cost science missions to study our neighboring planet, Mars. These spacecraft missions will either carry payloads that will land on Mars or instruments that will remain onboard to carry out experiments while orbiting Mars.

The Mars Micromission Project is planning to launch a series of a small spacecraft to Mars as piggyback payloads on the French Ariane 5 rocket when it launches commercial communication satellites into an Earth-based geosynchronous transfer orbit. From Earth orbit, the Mars Micromission spacecraft will use on-board propulsion and an innovative trajectory involving Lunar and Earth flybys to send the spacecraft on the proper trajectory to Mars. The launch services will be provided through the NASA partnership with the French space agency, Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), at no cost to NASA. Launch of the first Mars Micromission spacecraft is planned for spring of 2003 from the Ariane launch facilities in Kourou, French Guiana.

The design of the Mars Micromission spacecraft is based on a common spacecraft bus concept, which can be configured to deliver one or more science probes to the Martian atmosphere or carry extra propellant for orbit insertion into Mars orbit. The 2003 Mars Micromission would be a communication/navigation orbiter, the first of a constellation of Mars-orbiting satellites that would make up the Mars Network. The Mars Network is intended to dramatically increase the data returned to Earth from future landed or orbiting Mars missions by providing efficient relay communications, while also providing navigation capabilities like those of the Global Positioning Satellite system.

"The combination of the common spacecraft design and the piggyback launch is essential to achieve the Mars Micromission Project goals of frequent low-cost access to Mars," said David Lehman, the JPL project manager for the Mars Micromission. "We plan to be able to launch at least two Mars Micromission spacecraft during every Mars opportunity, about every two years. About half of these spacecraft are expected to carry out focused science investigations selected through competition, while the other half will be used to build up the Mars Network of communication relay and navigation satellites."

The Mars Micromission Project is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C., as part of the ongoing Mars Surveyor Program. The purpose of the Mars Micromission is to increase the quality and quantity of the science and technology data from the Mars Surveyor Program. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. provides systems engineering services, and designs and manufactures complete space systems; spacecraft; space and Earth science instruments and sensors; cryogenic subsystems; antenna systems and video products for commercial and government customers. The company is a subsidiary of Ball Corporation, a Fortune 500 company which had sales of $2.9 billion in 1998.

———-

PanAmSat Corporation announced November 29 that the company's Galaxy 11 satellite has arrived in Kourou, French Guiana, in preparation for a late December 1999 launch aboard an Ariane rocket.

Galaxy 11, the 10th satellite in PanAmSat's U.S. fleet and its 20th worldwide, will be the largest commercial communications spacecraft ever deployed into space. The launch will also commence the company's comprehensive expansion and backup plan that will place seven additional satellites into orbit by mid-2001.

"Galaxy 11 marks a new era for PanAmSat as we unveil the beginning of next-generation satellite services for our customers in North America and around the world," said Robert A. Bednarek, PanAmSat's executive vice president and chief technology officer. "With the launch of Galaxy 11, PanAmSat will begin the most ambitious satellite expansion and backup plan in the industry, providing increased fleet redundancy, enhanced flexibility and expanded global capacity."

The first of the advanced HS 702 spacecraft constructed by Hughes Space and Communications Co., Galaxy 11 contains a communications payload consisting of 40 Ku-band and 24 C-band high-power transponders. The satellite will initially be located at 99 degrees west longitude and will provide sweeping coverage of North America and Brazil. An Ariane 44L rocket will deploy Galaxy 11 into space after liftoff from Arianespace's Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

Galaxy 11 is the first of three satellites that PanAmSat intends to launch over the next six months to provide expansion and backup services for the company's Galaxy(R) cable neighborhood customers in North America. The Galaxy cable neighborhood, the premier satellite video neighborhood for cable program distribution throughout the United States, is comprised of Galaxy 1R at 133 degrees west longitude, Galaxy 5 at 125 degrees west longitude, Galaxy 7 at 91 degrees west longitude and Galaxy 9 at 123 degrees west longitude.

The Galaxy cable neighborhood expansion and backup plan consists of the launch of the Galaxy 11, 10R and 4R satellites as well as the transition of the Galaxy 6, 7 and 9 satellites to new orbital locations. The redeployment plan is as follows:

  * Galaxy 11 will be launched to 99 degrees west longitude; 

  * Galaxy 6, currently located at 99 degrees west longitude, will transition to 91 degrees west longitude and serve as the short-term backup for Galaxy 7; 

  * Galaxy 10R will be launched to 123 degrees west longitude in the first quarter of 2000; 

  * Galaxy 9, currently located at 123 degrees west longitude, will transition to 127 degrees west longitude; 

  * Following Galaxy 10R, Galaxy 4R will be launched to 99 degrees west longitude in the first quarter of 2000; 

  * Galaxy 11 will then transition to 91 degrees west longitude and serve as the long-term replacement for Galaxy 7; and 

  * Galaxy 6 will then serve as the permanent in-orbit spare for the Galaxy cable neighborhood.

The redeployment is designed to ensure comprehensive service for PanAmSat's full-time cable distribution customers located on the Galaxy cable neighborhood satellites. In addition, Galaxy IX, when relocated at 127 degrees west longitude, will create a new prime cable orbital location, providing additional C-band cable distribution capacity to meet the increasing demand for cable programming in the United States. As a result, PanAmSat's Galaxy cable neighborhood will consist of five satellites in five orbital locations and a permanent in-orbit spare by late 2000.

PanAmSat's expansion plan also calls for the launch of four new international satellites (PAS-1R, PAS-9, PAS-10 and Galaxy IIIC) within the next 18 months. With the launch of these seven new domestic U.S. and international satellites by mid-2001, PanAmSat will operate a global fleet of 25 spacecraft, the largest geostationary satellite network in the world.

PanAmSat is the world's leading commercial provider of global satellite-based communications services. The company operates a global network of 19 satellites supported by PanAmSat professionals on five continents. These resources enable PanAmSat to provide video and telecommunications services to hundreds of customers worldwide.


	2. December 2,1999:Ariane V-124 mission preview

A pair of European miliary reconnaissance satellites are awaiting launch from South America on Friday aboard an Arianespace Ariane 4 rocket.

Liftoff is planned for 1622 GMT (11:22 a.m. EST) from the ELA-2 launch complex in Kourou, French Guiana along South America's northeastern coastline. A 20-minute launch window will be available to get the rocket airborne.

The primary payload for Arianespace Flight 124 is the Helios 1B surveillance spacecraft built under a cooperative program between France, Italy and Spain.

The launch of Helios 1B comes four years after Helios 1A was carried into space aboard an Ariane 4.

The French Ministry of Defence is in charge of the $2 billion Helios program, with the French space agency CNES responsible for the satellites and their launches.

Matra Marconi Space built both Helios optical reconnaissance satellites, which are believed to have one-meter resolution.

The Ariane 40 rocket, the least powerful of the Ariane 4 family with no strap-on boosters, will deliver Helios 1B into a polar sunsynchronous orbit. Spacecraft separation is expected about 18 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.

A secondary passenger for Friday's launch is Clementine, a small experimental satellite designed to test signals intelligence technologies.

Clementine was built by Alcatel Space and Thomson, and should be released into space about 21 minutes and 53 seconds into flight.

The launch will be the 123rd for an Ariane rocket, the 8th of 1999, the 92nd Ariane 4 to be flown and the 7th for an Ariane 40 configuration vehicle.

If all goes according to plan, it will mark the 50th consecutive successful launch of an Ariane 4 rocket, establishing a new commercial record.

The current record of 49 straight successes was set in 1995 by the McDonnell Douglas Delta 2. Ariane 4 tied that record in November with the launch of GE-4.


	3. December 2,1999:Ariane V-124 payload preview

The primary passenger aboard Arianespace Flight 124 is Helios 1B, a European optical reconnaissance spy satellite built by Matra Marconi Space. The craft is the second to be launched under a joint defense program formed between France, Italy and Spain. The French Ministry of Defence is in charge of the Helios system, and has delegated responsibility for the space segment to French space agency CNES.

The French Missile and Space Directorate heads the overall $2 billion Helios program, the first military reconnaissance system developed in Europe. Program funding is divided with France providing 79 percent, Italy adding 14 percent and 7 percent from Spain.

The Helios 1A and 1B spacecraft are based upon Matra Marconi Space's Spot 4 Earth-observing satellite. They are 3-axis stabilized and nadir pointing. The optical reconnaissance satellites provide images with approximately one-meter resolution. Operations can be performed only during daylight and clear weather conditions.

**Helios 1B facts** |   
---|---  
Service entry | March 2000  
Mass | 2,500 kg  
Power | 2.1 kW  
Design life | 5 years  
Orbit | Low sun-synchronous, near-polar  
Resolution | Classified *  
Imaging instrument | Pushbroom  
Image telemetry | X band, encrypted  
Telemetry/control | S band, encrypted  
Attitude control/reference | Two gyros, star sensors  
Control mechanisms | Hydrazine thrusters, momentum wheels, magnetic torquers  
* Military observers believe the resolution is one-meter.  
**Source:** Matra Marconi Space press materials  
  
Helios 1A was launched aboard Arianespace Flight 75 on July 7, 1995. The Ariane 40 rocket placed the satellite into a near-polar orbit with a perigee of 679 km, apogee of 682 km and inclination of 98.1 degrees to the equator. The spacecraft entered service three months later.

A follow-on pair of advanced Helios 2 satellites are under development by Matra Marconi Space, and will be based on the Spot 5 satellite design. They will feature an infrared capability to allow observations at night.

Arianespace Flight 124 will feature an Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads, or ASAP, to carry a French military microsatellite into space. The upcoming mission will place the 50 kg Clementine satellite into orbit following deployment of Helios 1B.

Clementine's mission is to test technologies for military eavesdropping satellites of the future. The tiny craft was provided by Alcatel Space and Thomson to study the Earth's radioelectrical environment.

The satellite will be the second technology testbed to be launched as a precursor to the French Zenon signals intelligence satellite program. The first was Cerise, launched along with Helios 1A in 1995.


	4. December 3,1999:Ariane V-124 mission status center

**TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1999  
0501 GMT (0001 EST)**  
  
Arianespace officials will hold a launch rehearsal today for Friday's planned flight of an Ariane 40 rocket for the French Ministry of Defence. The Helios 1B and Clementine satellites will be trucked into a polar sunsynchronous orbit following liftoff from Kourou, French Guiana. A 20-minute launch window will open at 1622 GMT on Friday (11:22 a.m. EST).

Tomorrow the traditional Launch Readiness Review, or RAL, will be held to determine if the rocket, payload, launch range and other elements to the mission are prepared for flight. If there are no significant concerns, the "go" will be given for rocket arming and first and second stage propellant loading. The fueling operation is scheduled for Thursday.

If all goes as scheduled, the final countdown will begin at 0152 GMT on Friday (8:52 p.m. EST on Thursday). As the hours tick off until liftoff, the 321-foot tall gantry enclosing the rocket at the ELA-2 launch complex will be retracted beginning at 1027 GMT (5:27 a.m. EST). Loading of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into the Ariane's third stage will commence at 1247 GMT (7:47 a.m. EST). The launch team will activate the rocket's telemetry, radar transponders and telecommand systems at 1517 GMT (10:17 a.m. EST). If there are no problems standing in the way of an on-time launch, officials will allow the Synchronized Launch Sequence to begin at Launch Minus-6 minutes. This computer-controlled process performs the final tasks to prepate the rocket for launch.  
  


**WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1999  
1701 GMT (1201 EST)**  
  
The launch readiness review is scheduled for today in Kourou, French Guiana, to clear an Ariane 40 rocket, its French Ministry of Defence payloads and the range for Friday's planned launch. The meeting of top-level officials will review the status of all elements of the launch and mission. The meeting will conclude, if no problems are raised, by giving the command to begin arming the rocket and preparing to load storable propellants aboard the first and second stages.

Liftoff remains targeted to occur at 1622 GMT on Friday (11:22 a.m. EST), the opening of a 20-minute window.  
  


**THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1999  
2330 GMT (1830 EST)**  
  
All systems are reported go for Friday's launch of Arianespace Flight 124. Officials have cleared an Ariane 40 rocket for launch carrying the Helios 1B and Clementine reconnaissance satellites. Liftoff remains scheduled for 1622 GMT (11:22 a.m. EST), the opening of a 20-minute window. The final countdown is slated to begin in a few hours at 0152 GMT.

**FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3,1999**

**1425 GMT (0925 EST)**  
****  
Arianespace is less than two hours away from today's launch of an Ariane 4 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana in South America. Officials says the countdown is on schedule for liftoff at 1622 GMT (11:22 a.m. EST).  
  


**1542 GMT (1042 EST)**  
  
Countdown clocks are inside 40 minutes to the scheduled liftoff time for Arianespace Flight 124. There are no problems being worked and the launch team reports the rocket, payloads and weather conditions are go for flight.

**1552 GMT (1052 EST)**  
  
Minus 30 minutes. The final countdown for today's launch began 0152 GMT (8:52 p.m. EST yesterday). Earlier this morning the mobile service structure was rolled away from the Ariane 40 atop the ELA-2 launch pad. About three hours ago, launch crews began loading cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into the rocket's third stage. The first and second stages were fueled with storable propellants on Thursday.  
  


**1602 GMT (1102 EST)**  
  
Minus 20 minutes. Today's Ariane 4 launch will be a rare event - it is happening in daylight. See a [picture](https://spaceflightnow.com/ariane/v124/images/991203v124onpad.jpg) of the rocket on the pad from moments ago.


End file.
